Speaking at Desktop First UX Summit about native Desktop vs. Web for Desktop

At the Desktop First UX Summit, organized for today and tomorrow by Embarcadero, I'll be giving a session comparing native solutions and web solutions for desktop development

For today and tomorrow, Embarcadero has helped organize the first edition of a very interesting free online conference, called " Desktop First UX Summit ". The overall focus of the event is to underline that desktop UI and UX should not just clone the web and mobile ones, but developers should use all of the power of the desktop platforms and create specific user experiences optimized for desktop users. As you know, mobile first has become common, but it is not always the right approach.

As part of this conference, I'm giving a session that is not focused strictly on UX but on applications architectures. I'm going to discusss the (worrisome) growth in the use of web technologies for building desktop applications. Beside the UI and UX implications (apps on Windows don't look and feel to be Windows any more) there are very significant issues related with the approach, which is mostly driven by the popular Electron framework:

- the memory consumption of applications (with small utility apps using hundreds of MB of RAM)

- the download and deployment size

- the security risks of relying on multiple third party engines embedded in and deployed with the solution

- the overall user experience

- but also the overall development experience

While I won't go deeper on all of these areas, I'll touch on some of them at high level. We really need to ask ourselves why we are ending up in this direction. I remember the complaints for the size of a Delphi app, which now compares to something 100 times bigger! Anyway, enjoy the session (or a replay) and join us for one of the live panels happening today and tomorrow at the conference. I'm scheduled for Panel#3 tomorrow, but might be able to join a few others.

In the coming days, I'll do another blog post with some more links and information, as I don't want to spoil the session content!

It must be recognise that building a multi-platform solution is daunting task. There are 3 solutions: 1) use the native development solution (Xcode, Android studio, Visual Studio), 2) use cross- platform development tool (like Delphi or Xamarin ) or use Web Technology that can run either in the browser, or in a runtime environment like electron. From all solution, I still prefer the Delphi Way, because it is not Sandboxed, so we use all functionality the OS can offer and you can have have also less technology or language to manage with Delphi. Electron offer access to file system, but it is still sand boxed. So for me it is a no go. Sand Boxed just means for me that I cannot be innovative to some extend because of the platform limitation. So with Delphi we do not have this kind of limitation on the client. Also Javascript in 2020 still a language that lack object orientation and basic functionality. The consequence is that there is a jungle of frameworks that are very difficult to manage and all of these make also a shaky foundation for a software project because from all these framework I would not bet a penny to find out the framework that will still exist in 3 years time frame. Still I think that a web application that does not require user installation, is a good entry door for proposing services and software based solution. I would never build and house without a door, and you? But in this post I would like also to underline the limitation of the Delphi technology on the server side, and the difficulties to find information for some very common use case. Let me give am example. I want have a server build in Delphi (yes, Java is nice C# is nice too, PHP is simple and free) but, I think that all these language in small companies are not sustainable). I want have a client which is just a webpage and I want from the web page upload a file to the Server . If the server was build in C#, Java and PHP, I could find thousand examples how to do it. The only thing I found with Delphi on the Server side, is using Websnap (my god, I am even not sure it still alive?), or DataSnap (alive for sure, but also very old forum post) and I found nothing with RadServer. So my conclusion is concentrate to the 90% that the user need, and good documentation for file upload belong to this 90%: This is the Delphi way.

Marco Tech Blog

Speaking at Desktop First UX Summit about native Desktop vs. Web for Desktop

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Speaking at Desktop First UX Summit about native Desktop vs. Web for Desktop

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